It might be necessary to poke `Kumba about building some newer IP22 netboot images. I could try it, but since my Indy is an R4600SC, it's impossible for me to test an R5000 image. I've also had difficulty getting modern Linux 2.6 kernels to work properly on the R4600SC.

I've tried to work towards debugging the problems, with little success._________________Stuart Longland (a.k.a Redhatter, VK4MSL)
I haven't lost my mind - it's backed up on a tape somewhere...

could you see debian net-boot installer ?
i can say that it is working on the R5000

unfortunately i hate debian

i think it may help to build up a new gentoo-net-boot

I used a minimal debian installation to I install Gentoo on my Indy (180MHz r5k). Actually, I was running Debian after that. The testing/unstable tree is pretty up2date and worked well ... until a few months ago: X refused to start. Haven't been able to fix it yet.
Apt-get is also nice to have on a slow system. I've dabbled a bit with crossdev on Gentoo, but it failed on a lot of packages. Distcc is also no real solution as pushing/pulling data through a 10mbit connection already gives you quite an overhead on the Indy.

Anyway, Did you try the 'r4k' netboot image? It should work fine. My current Gentoo kernel-configuration is based on one of the latest debian-mips r4k kernels.

Well, you can do a Gentoo installation from a Debian netboot image... just drop to the prompt once the menu appears, then proceed as you would with a typical Gentoo installation._________________Stuart Longland (a.k.a Redhatter, VK4MSL)
I haven't lost my mind - it's backed up on a tape somewhere...

Yeah, on Indy, the framebuffer is not directly accessible to the kernel or userland -- thus, /dev/fb0 is not available.

Nothing you can do there, other than building your own GIO32 card that overcomes this limitation._________________Stuart Longland (a.k.a Redhatter, VK4MSL)
I haven't lost my mind - it's backed up on a tape somewhere...

eheheh i'd like to build a GIO32 for indy or GIO64 for indigo2
fortunately we have the FPGA technology to do this, but unfortunately we've no documentation about them: i mean something is still missing in what i could understand reading kernel tree

however, does it mean no X11 on indy ?
or there is a way to run X11 on the GFX XL24 ?

the kumba liveCD is able to start X11 ?
in my indy it fails after booting